


Blossoms of Rosemary

by starblessed



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Flowers, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Ophelia Deserved Better, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 13:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13525707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: A study of Ophelia, in life, and in death.





	Blossoms of Rosemary

**Author's Note:**

> suicide is bad and you should not do it, ever
> 
> actually, don't do anything anyone did in hamlet, ever. don't take your life lessons from hamlet. at all. please.
> 
> that said, here's a story.

The river opens its welcoming arms to her, and Ophelia breathes.

It’s embrace is cool. It is pure. It is cleansing. It washes away all the scum, the muck and filth and rot that clings to Ophelia like the most lethal miasma. All of it goes with the waves — and Ophelia can breathe. She looks up and no longer sees a canopy of distorted red and black, but a clear blue sky.

Open sky above; crystal water below; and her, in the middle. Floating between the boundary of reality and oblivion.

She dangles her legs from the branch until the water laps at her bare feet. A laugh bubbles from her throat. It gurgles like crystalline waves, threatening to wash her away.

* * *

When she was a child they found her wandering barefoot through the Queen’s garden, plucking blossoms between her tiny, ambitious fingers. Mother was a lady’s maid. Father was a courtier. Brother trained alongside the prince. And Ophelia…

Ophelia wandered.

Singing childish ditties to herself, she roamed down well-tred paths. Dirt etched itself between her toes. Imprints of tiny feet were left abandoned in the flowerbeds. Laughing to herself, she plucked the gardenias at their roots, lillies from their rest, as many roses as she could carry. When they pricked her hands until they bled, she didn’t notice.

Her mother discovered her knee-deep in a radiant field. Amidst the rainbow canvas of blossoming springtime, a tiny head of red curls bobbed and danced as if it belonged there. Mother scooped Ophelia up in her arms before she could lay her hands on any more of the queen’s garden; she came up with flowers still clutched in her fist.

“How now, Ophelia? You mustn’t wander off!”

Ophelia smiled and tucked a white bloom behind her mother’s ear. It made her look, she decided, like an angel. Flowers made everything seem brighter, more vivid. They were life in its purest form. When Ophelia sought joy, she found it in the garden’s familiar embrace.

When her mother died, she was laid to rest in the cemetery. Ophelia placed a bundle of the queen's white lillies in her casket.

After that, she no longer visited the garden.

* * *

The branch bows under her weight as Ophelia leans forward, teasing her toes in the water’s surface. White rapids gush over her feet; they creep up her ankle, caressing the bare skin of her calf. In another life, she would have hidden from the rushing water. Now, she yearns for it.

The branch holding her groans again, bending in the middle. It’s pain registers in the back of Ophelia’s mind. _(Pain, like a rapier spearing you clean through. Pain, like losing your love, your dignity, your father, in a succession of rapid blows. Pain, pain, until it is all that exists, all that’s known, a deafening typhoon that drowns everything else out.)_

Ophelia understands a thing or two about pain.

The water pulls her down, its playful hands beckoning. The water doesn’t torment. It hurts no one unless it is allowed to. The water can wash away the pain, and leave peace in its wake.

White globeflowers line the water’s edge, teasing the adventurous surf. She catches sight of them, and yearns to reach out and grab one for herself.

* * *

 She loved nothing more than putting together vases full of warmth and light.

Bright pink tulips for gratitude; white daisies for hope; gleaming laurels for victory. There were a thousand things you could say with a single vase of flowers, and Ophelia learned the language to fluency.

“Beautiful,” she’d proclaim, topping her latest arrangement off with a last carnation. When she turned, vase held proudly in her arms, her father was always waiting for her.

“And whose delight will accompany this latest winsome construction, dear Ophelia?”

The queen, perhaps. Her brother, training harder every day. The king, or the courtiers, or one of the other attendants who sit at Ophelia’s side in court. A thousand people just as deserving of something beautiful, but this vase held a message intended for only one.

Ophelia looked down at her bouquet and smiled.

“It is for Prince Hamlet, my lord.”

* * *

Her fingers dig into the branch’s pliant wood. It is the only thing supporting her, and she’s growing bored of it.

The drop isn’t far. A quick descent into the water below -- no greater than jumping from the edge of her bed, or leaning out her window to wave at passing courtiers. Ophelia could fall. The water would catch her in its arms, she knows.

The gauzy hems of her dress drown in the surf. The water holds its arms out, reaching for her.

* * *

 

Ophelia falls, and there is no one below to catch her.

The night she loses her father, the world seems to shatter. The weight that had been pushing on her chest for weeks is suddenly unbearable. She bolts upright in bed, the cries of “Polonius is dead!” ringing in her ears like the dirge of a thousand funeral bells. Her ribs break. Her lungs implode. Her heart bursts in her chest, a barrel of gunpowder catching alight, and she feels the screams tear out of her before she realizes her mouth is open.

Handfuls of spun copper twist in her fists, pooling around her bed. She claws at her face with nails bit to nothing, tugging at her hair, her eyes, her skin. Anything she can reach, she destroys.

There is nothing left to her. No parents, no prince, no position. She is a destitute orphan in court, better a nun than a whore. She has, is, always was, _nothing._

Her father falls, and Ophelia falls with him.

* * *

The water takes her with a whisper. She does not fall into its embrace so much as she drops. She releases her hands, closes her eyes, and feels the rush of air rise around her a second before she hits the water.

Immediately, she feels clean. The chill of the water buries deep into her bones, but nothing has ever felt better. There is a power in the waves, a freedom she has never tasted before. She opens her mouth to laugh, and water floods past her lips.

It would be easy to say that she loses. She loses her balance, her breath, her mind. She loses her life. To Ophelia, though, it does not feel like losing at all.

Her dress weighs her down. Water bubbles around her, flying from her mouth and nose, wide open eyes staring up at the hazy sky. For the first time in an eternity, she feels as if she has gained instead of lost. Alive in the water; alive in the sky. The air fades away, the water swallows her whole, flowers and weeds twine in her fingers, and Ophelia…

Ophelia takes a deep breath.

Ophelia sinks.

Ophelia fades away.

**Author's Note:**

> did i actually write hamlet fanfic?
> 
> ... maybe.


End file.
